This is going to be a real problem. AI is getting so good that keeping patients de-identified to meet HIPAA compliance is getting to be impossible. Once patients are aware of this, clinical trial participation could decrease, and research could be negatively impacted. Someone with ML cred needs to examine the HIPAA Safe Harbor standards and explore how to keep PHI really protected, in deed not just in name. I have an idea that I thought of during an informatics course I took. It would put control of personal information in the hands of the patient, not the hospital or insurance company. Would love to discuss with anyone in the field.
––– 良くない–––
Health care is the 'engine' of the job market — and that's risky for the economy. What does it mean when the largest employer or largest company in the state is a hospital system? It doesn't mean that people are getting healthier. For Oregon, the hospital industry is indeed dominant, and in cities like Eugene, much of the hiring is for hospitals and clinics. This means that unions are fed, and ultimately healthcare gets expensive and unaffordable to a lot of people. Growth of the healthcare industry usually means growth in insurance costs, and as mentioned, costs to satisfy unionized employees. It's a bubble that has to pop. We've got to get unions out of so many things, and the healthcare system is one of the most urgent.
––– 良くない–––
The "Are You Sure?" Problem. Great exercise for students when learning about LLMs. Ask the LLM if it is sure about an answer. You'd be surprised at how often the confident answer become unconfident.
––– 凄い –––
‘I am never off the clock’: inside the booming world of gen Z side hustles. At least some GenZers are using AI to their advantage and opening side hustles to make some money. A smart young person can use what's out there to start making some serious money. No need for universal basic income.
And I agree with this guy: it's too soon to dismiss human-developed software in favor of DIY efforts.
The Prediction Singularity Is Upon Us. It's fun to build financial predictors to guide stock market investments. Many folks are doing that already, and the tools are freely available. Going for the general predictive market is more challenging, but should be doable. Aside from Black Swans, we should soon get pretty good at being able to predict things. Maybe in another year or so.
––– 凄い –––
Lots of stuff about the news industry lately.
Most Americans don’t pay for news and don’t think they need to. I think it's more likely that most Americans think that news is crap. Who wants to pay for crap?
Take a look at this tidbit regarding the Epstein files affair. I hadn't realized that women in the vocal crowd that is crying "victim" were adults at the time of their involvement with Epstein. I hadn't realized that. They weren't underage and should have known what they were doing. Why has no "journalist" mentioned this? Why do people like Nick Shirley, Cam Higby, Andy Ngo, and others have to do the investigative work?
And then there is SB1850, another disastrous bit of legislation from Khanh Pham. She wants news aggregation sites to pay Oregon media to link to stories generated by "news sources". So Google won't be able to even provide a link to an OregonLive story with a description without falling afoul of this. So if you want to search for Oregon stories on a search engine, you won't get anything from mainstream media sources unless they have a legal agreement in place, which will likely mean payment. What will happen to OregonLive's visit rate? Social media sites and smaller amateur blogs will likely replace the mainstream outlets, which will see their revenue drop. I'm betting this is going to fail.
––– 良くない–––
Trump has dismantled the EPA's Endangerment Finding, created in 2009, which we can now say in retrospect, was bunk. Of course in Oregon, there's a bill to punish energy companies for extreme natural disasters. How crazy is that? It's just money. The state needs money and they can't pay for stuff anymore, so someone else has to. It's going to get worse.
––– 良くない–––
Frequent Diet Soda Intake Linked to Fourfold Increased Dementia Risk. And of course, I want to find out what artificial sweeteners were studied, and it's behind a paywall. You'd think that the reporter would do the due diligence and find out, but journalists are so incurious these days.
––– 良くない–––
Elon Musk is not daunted by the departures from xAI. He's on a hiring spree to get new brains. That's what leaders do. Been there, done that.
––– 凄い –––
Alex Berenson just posted another piece on the dangers of cannabis. And after a toddler was brain-damaged from a cannabis overdose, Oregon wants to limit THC content in edibles. It's really sad that 86% of Oregon teenagers don't think there is any harm with long-term regular cannabis use. Really? Well, the education system can't even teach them regular education, so this is no surprised. Man, even Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to long term effects of cannabis. Long-term use has been known to cause harm. This is why we have kids like we do nowadays.
––– 良くない–––
Russia is now in favor of retaining the dollar reserve currency? Yeah who cares about Brazil, South Africa and India. Russia is dominant. China hasn't said anything yet, but the world reserve currency was never going to be the renminbi anyway.
––– 凄い –––
John Kitzhaber wants to save the Oregon Health Plan. Ugh, I remember the "prioritized list". What a dumb idea that was. His justification for this approach:
––– 良くない–––
No one wants to ration, but if you don’t have enough money, you’re going to ration it either by dropping people or by cutting benefits or by cutting what you pay providers. That’s really the only three options you’ve got. We all do it. We’re just trying to do it openly.No we don't have to ration care. That's the Democrat approach, endorsed by Ezekiel Emanuel. No no no! There are better ways, and Trump is working on it. It involves taking away control from insurance companies (and empowering the consumer), and they won't like it at all.